The Madding Crowd
by Laudine
Summary: First in a series of drabbles. After one of her friends has a close call, Isabel must make a choice between her commitment to her sorority and her position in the X-Men.


**Disclaimer: I do not own "X-Men: Evolution." But Isabel Sayre and Caitlin Sprague are mine.**

**Note: While the date rape attempt unfolds, for the purposes of this story, at a fraternity party on a fictional college campus, it is important to remind readers that this can happen anywhere at any time to anyone. The sororities and fraternities named in this are purely fictional, even if some of the events involving them are based on both experience and other events. And underage drinking violates the rules of the College Panhellenic Council and many universities, but it still happens, whether or not you're in the Greek system.**

**The Madding Crowd**

They weren't supposed to be drinking; they weren't twenty-one yet, but somehow at the Alpha Sigma Omicron fraternity party, to which they had both been invited, it didn't matter. They didn't have to pay for their cups, either, being Delta Taus. The Alpha O's were picking up on that for their sorority, and somehow it made Isabel and Caitlin feel special to be a part of that special group.

"So how does it feel to be out of High School Heaven?" Caitlin asked Isabel as they sat in front of the bonfire in the backyard of the fraternity, "Tell Me" blaring in the background.

"Absolutely divine," Isabel replied, stretching out her legs and luxuriating in the balmy May air. "No more petty dramas, no more being yelled at for being out too late…"

"No more jealous stares from certain guys," Caitlin added.

"Unless it's from a fraternity guy," Isabel contradicted.

They laughed. Isabel turned up her nose at the beer and poured it out into the grass—cheap keg shit—while Caitlin continued to drink.

Isabel wasn't really one to go out partying every weekend, but during the week in between winter semester and spring session, when everyone was getting ready to go home, she found it irresistible. The year in the sorority house had been wonderful, mostly free of obligations from the team, except for practice now and then in the Danger Room, or worst case scenario, an emergency mission in which they absolutely needed her. But it was all too good to be true, this year-long stint in sorority life. She knew she would have to make a choice eventually, and that would mean going part-time in fall semester and returning to the mansion to take alumnae status. And she dreaded returning.

"I'm getting more. You still drinking?"

"No." Isabel sat back in her chair, chatted and flirted lightly with some of the boys around her, giggled at the drunken antics of the other partygoers, and watched as Caitlin let Josh pour her some beer out of the keg and hand it to her while she waited.

"Caitlin," Isabel admonished. "You know that's a no-no. Here, go get some on your own. Take my cup."

"Oh, Isabel, Josh wouldn't do anything!" Caitlin exclaimed as she drank down her beer. "And look, he's bringing you a cup, too, and another for me. Thanks, sweetie!"

Isabel once more poured the beer out onto the ground when Josh wasn't looking, and Josh seemed to be staring at Caitlin a little _too_ intently. After her third cup, Caitlin's face was pale.

"I don't feel good." She stood up shakily. "I think I'm going to be sick."

"Caitlin." Isabel sprang up and took Caitlin's purse and slung it on her shoulder with her own, and she caught Caitlin under the arms. "Come on."

Josh approached with an air of concern. "Is there anything I can do? Does she need to go upstairs to lie down? I'll take her…"

_"No!"_ Isabel exclaimed almost too urgently, the shivers going up and down her spine and the warning ringing clearly in her mind. "I can take care of her. Just leave us alone…"

"Isabel…" Caitlin's voice was slurred. "I can't feel my feet…"

_Ohgodohgodohgod…_

Isabel led Caitlin to the steps to the back door of the house and fumbled in her purse for her cell phone.

"Isabel, I'm scared," Caitlin slurred. "I think he…Isabel, don't leave me alone…"

"I won't, Caitlin, I won't," Isabel promised, chewing on her artificial nails as she heard the telephone ringing. When someone picked up the phone, she lost it and began to blubber away.

----------

Professor Xavier was tutoring Kurt in physics when Kitty entered the study with the cordless phone in her hand. "It's for you," she said as she approached him. "It's Isabel. She's totally hysterical, and all I could understand was Caitlin and spiked beer and oh my god I want to talk to the professor."

Professor Xavier took the phone from Kitty and dismissed them both. "Isabel, it's me," he said carefully. "What's going on?"

"Oh, Professor, I think…one of the boys here drugged Caitlin…GHB or something…" Isabel sounded sober, but she was obviously frightened for her friend. They shouldn't have been drinking underage, but he wouldn't say anything about that now; he had done it himself back in college. "Can you send someone, anyone…?"

"Where are you?" he asked her quietly.

"The Alpha Sig O house."

That wasn't too far out of town, near the university, he thought. "Logan is out taking some of the other students shopping. I'll call him and tell him to come get you. Isabel…"

"Yes, Professor?"

"Caitlin may have to go to the hospital."

---------

Scott, Jean, and Spike came out of Target to see Logan sitting sullenly in the van, and he seemed to be in deep conversation with someone on the other end of his cell phone. Scott jumped into the front seat as Logan ended the call. "What's going on?"

"We gotta swing by the Alpha Sigma Omicron house. You know where it is?" he asked Scott, who shook his head. Fraternity house. Fraternity house equaled trouble, and the one in trouble was no doubt Isabel.

"It's in Bayville," Jean offered from her place in the backseat. "We passed it once when Isabel took me to the sorority house for dinner last month. Here—let me get in front…" She handed Scott her cell phone out of her purse as they switched spots. "Call her and tell her we're coming. Keep her on the phone in case we need directions."

Scott went through Jean's contact list until he found Isabel's cell number, and then he dialed it. When Isabel picked up, she was crying, but she was straight up sober. He could still hear Logan muttering, "Fuckin' stupid Isabel. You would think a girl that smart wouldn't do such stupid shit."

"She isn't drunk, Logan," Scott announced.

Logan stopped muttering. Spyke glanced at Scott worriedly. They knew the silence. Logan was pissed.

They could hear a Fall Out Boy song blaring from the house two streets over. Logan parked the van in front of the driveway and they got out of it. "What's the sorority again, Jean?" Logan asked.

"Delta Tau. She's a Delta Tau." Jean scanned the front yard for any sign of them, but Logan caught a whiff of them and was headed toward the back of the house, and the three high-school students followed. Isabel was crouched on the front stoop beside Caitlin, propping her friend up, and Caitlin's face was pale. They ran to her immediately, and some of the college students stared at the older man as he checked Caitlin's vital signs, then sniffed at the cup.

"GHB." He glanced at Isabel. "Were you drinkin'?"

"No—just a sip, but I spat it out. I hate keg beer."

"Figures." He picked Caitlin up. "Caitlin, can you hear me?"

Caitlin opened her eyes and mumbled something.

"We're takin' you to the hospital. You got a lotta drug in you."

"Isabel…" Caitlin mumbled.

"I'm here," Isabel said. Jean went to take Isabel's hand and led her back to the van. They put Caitlin in the middle seat, and Scott and Spike squeezed in the back with the bags of purchases from Target. Isabel got into the middle seat, too, and Logan, his jaw clenched and his knuckles whitening from gripping the steering wheel too hard, drove them to the ER. Isabel found Caitlin's health insurance cards in her purse, and they took her back to have her stomach pumped immediately. Isabel went back with her, and the doctor asked if she had remained with Caitlin when she had begun to feel ill.

"I didn't leave her. But…"

Caitlin, once she was lucid, insisted that nothing had happened, but still the RN checked her for signs of assault. The police detective there was professional and courteous, and took their statements; Isabel gave the normal explanation that she had remained at the Xavier Institute so that she could attend college in New York while her mother remained in France. But sex crimes detectives, she knew, had more important things to deal with than the goings-on at a school for gifted children.

Caitlin didn't want to go back to the sorority house once they let her go at two in the morning. She borrowed some pajamas from Storm and curled up to sleep in Isabel's bed. Isabel went downstairs for some warm milk when she found Logan in the kitchen, rummaging through the fridge for some beer.

"Thank you for all you did, Logan," she said to him as he moved out of the way for her. She took the gallon of skim milk out of the fridge and went for some chamomile tea and honey to make the drink she used when she couldn't sleep.

"Don't thank me. Thank Chuck in the morning." He took a large swig of his beer from the bottle, and she measured out the ingredients and poured them into the saucepan, then turned the burner on to low heat.

"But the hospital. Oh, Logan, you _hate_ hospitals…" Isabel had seen his face as he had walked in, how his lips had thinned and how his eyes had darted from here to there as he had sat down, as though he were waiting for the orderlies to strap him to a gurney and take him away into an operating room.

"You did the right thing, callin' Chuck, stayin' with Caitlin." He changed the subject. "That shows you care. But the question is: Do ya care about this team?"

"I do," she insisted. Logan snickered and raised an eyebrow.

"Then do the right thing. Do what you've been talkin' to Chuck about. Those kids like you. Hell, _I _even like you. You need to come back."

Come back. She bit her lip.

She knew now what she had to do.

-----------

She and Caitlin went back to the sorority house the next day. Isabel told Caitlin of her decision.

"What will you say to Paige and the rest of E-board?"

"The truth—that Professor Xavier needs me to help him out."

The events unfolded over the course of the next few weeks. The police did raid the Alpha Sigma Omicron house and found GHB in Josh's things, and there were two or three other girls who didn't have perceptive friends like Isabel and whom Josh _had_ hurt. Empire State University of Bayville thought about pulling the Alpha Sigma Omicron charter, but once the fraternity cooperated completely with the authorities, they did let up on it, so long as Josh Farquhar lost his membership to the fraternity.

Isabel moved back to the Institute and fully threw herself into the summer classes she was taking, two in each summer session. On her first night back, she knocked on the door of Professor Xavier's office, and telepathically he invited her in. She closed the door behind her, and he turned to face her as he turned off the television news.

"How are things, Isabel? How is Caitlin?"

"She's fine. They might want her to testify, but they don't need any of us, so it's still good." She sat down on the couch beside where he had situated his wheelchair, and he took her hand into his. "But Professor, there's more. I—I've realized a lot in the last few weeks…"

"And what did you realize, Isabel?" he asked her quietly, his gaze tender and his expression inquisitive.

"I love my sorority, and I love my friends, but I know that I'm meant for more than a lot of the other girls in it are. I want to commit myself fully to the team. I'll go part time in fall and go alum." She did not look at him when he said this, and he stroked her hair as her father should have done with her at that age when announcing such a decision.

"You're making a good choice," he said to her encouragingly. "It's a sacrifice, but I think you'll be happier in the end. You've always known you were meant for more."

She looked up and smiled at him. "I know. I feel better about it now. And besides, I think I'll be better able to live up to my sorority's ideals in this way than just leaving."

It was true. Isabel always wanted something to strive for, some great ideal to dedicate herself to. The ideals of Charles Xavier and Delta Tau Sorority were these things for her, and they kept her focused and driven. He had to admit that, for all of her changeability in moods and sprightly nature, she was one of the most committed to what the X-Men stood for.

She went to her English Victorian lit class that night and returned to see Kitty and Kurt waiting for her on the porch. Kitty sprang up when she heard Isabel's steps on the pavement of the driveway, and Isabel noticed the huge grin on her face.

"So, like, you're staying!" Kitty exclaimed, putting her arms around Isabel so that she nearly dropped both her purse and her bag for school.

"Yes," Isabel answered, hugging her back.

"Zis is good!" Kurt said, joining in the hug. "Now I haf someone to help me with my papers!"

"If you think I'm doing them for you, Kurt, you've got the wrong idea," Isabel reminded him in a singsong voice, ruffling his hair. Caitlin and the Professor were right: she _couldn't_ leave. She adored them all too much. Even if she felt she was beyond all of the seemingly insignificant trials and tribulations of high school, she was no further along in life than they were, and she was still a green girl as a member of the X-Men, too. Better that she be there to show them that there was life beyond some events that they believed could be the end of the world.

"What is this—a group hug?" Isabel heard Scott ask teasingly as he and Jean came out from the kitchen with ice cream cones.

"Isabel's staying," Kitty informed them, "and we _so_ need ice cream to celebrate."

Isabel followed Kitty into the kitchen for a cone, and she went for the chocolate chip cookie dough, of course.

"Isabel." Kitty was hesitant as they walked outside.

"Yes, Kitty?" Isabel prompted, stopping where she was and surveying Kitty's wide-eyed expression.

"I _can_ still borrow your formal dresses for Homecoming and stuff next year, can't I?"

Isabel began to laugh. "Oh, Kitty! Always!"

----------------

Isabel was still wired after the other students had gone to bed, and she remained downstairs with the cordless phone beside her to take any incoming calls while she did her reading. She jumped and dissipated into the air when she heard Logan come in, and she collected herself and reappeared on the couch as he stood in the doorway of the rec room. He seemed amused.

"You're not funny," she told him petulantly.

"You do that in the sorority house?" he asked her.

"No one there was as inconsiderate as _you_ are," she shot back. "And I kept it under strict control. Here, I let the control slip a bit because there's no one to worry about."

"There's the bogeyman."

"You'd smell him first."

"Point taken." He took off his ridiculous cowboy hat and sat down in the other chair beside hers. "Whatcha readin'?"

"_Bleak House_."

"It looks long."

"I like it, actually." She found the page she had been on and marked her place. "And so where were you?"

"Canada."

"Why? Was it that Sabertooth again?"

"Yeah."

Isabel could still remember last fall when he'd tried to break into the mansion and they'd caught him; Scott and Jean had gone with the professor and Storm to check into a tip about Magneto being in Seattle, and Isabel had been put on babysitting duty with Logan since she was going to be home doing homework anyhow. Hank was due back from a conference that evening, and Logan had gone to the bar to get out of the house. It had just been Kitty, Kurt, and Spyke, and Isabel was reliable enough and had watched them for a couple of hours plenty of times. No one had thought that someone would drive a helicopter from two counties over and drop Sabertooth onto the grounds. Isabel had felt the shivers up and down her spine during those hours before, and her teeth had begun to chatter, and her ears had begun to ring.

She had them suit up and went for her épée, and then she called Logan to tell him to come back quickly, that something was going to happen, she just knew it. He had been angry with her; she would have owed him a twelve-pack of beer if it was all for nothing.

Sabertooth had been insolent and mocking to all of them, but he had exclaimed when he had seen her, "So who's the hottie? So're you legal, honey? How 'bout after this I show ya a _real_ good time, huh?"

She had been very insulted—this _creature_ had the _audacity _to _proposition _her? She'd gone after him with her épée with its adamantium blade and given him a few good cuts in addition to the ones Wolverine gave him later when he ran into the house and saw all four of them surrounding Sabertooth. "Lemme take over from here," he ordered Isabel, but she, Nightcrawler, Spyke, and Shadowcat had remained with him until a limping, bleeding Sabertooth retreated into the night.

"And did you find him?" she asked him now.

"No. And I ain't goin' after him on a wild goose chase, either."

"He wants exactly that, you know."

"Like you'd know, Miss Clever. Anyway, you talk to Chuck?"

"I did."

"So what'd you decide? You gonna stay in that big house by the university and pay for your friends?"

"Logan!" Isabel glared at him, and her dark blue eyes flashed. "I'm doing the opposite. I'm staying. So that means you have to put up with me."

"You're not goin' back in the fall?"

"Part-time. I'm going alum. Which is why I'm going full-time during the summer."

"And how'll you manage _that_, 'goin' alum'?" he asked her.

"Professor Xavier is family—_to me_—and needs help around here. That's what I'll say."

He picked up that hat and twirled it around on one finger. "Well, imagine you, not bein' selfish. So what do I owe you for bein' wrong?"

She thought for a moment. "A bottle of good French wine. I'll tell you what kind tomorrow."

"You ain't drinkin'…"

"Logan, when my mother and I would go to France, I drank wine over there all the time. I drank wine with meals at home sometimes. That's why I didn't end up like Caitlin and drinking stupidly. I don't drink just to get drunk all the time."

He snorted. "Look," he said, "I'm goin' for a smoke outside. You should get to bed."

"I don't need you to tell me, Logan."

He laughed and felt in his pocket for a cigar and a matchbook. "I'll be back then."

He was at the doorway when she called to him, "Logan, you forgot something."

He turned to her, his face inquisitive. She pointed to his chair. "That ridiculous hat of yours."

He crossed the room and picked it up. She continued. "I don't understand why you wear it; it's an ugly hat…"

She was cut off as he placed it onto her head, making sure to push the brim over her eyes. Her manicured hands flew to the brim to pull it up. She glared at him, quite ruffled. "Oh, you… I can't believe you did that! You _know_ I hate this hat!"

"Of course you do, darlin'," he snickered from the doorway. "But it looks so good on you. You'll get to like it." And he went outside, still chuckling.

She plucked the hat off of her head and threw it at the chair he had been sitting in. Oh, how she _hated_ him sometimes! He was so…so arrogant, so irritating! Calling her Miss Clever just because she knew more than he did about certain things, making fun of her choice to be in a sorority…And yet…

If she had left and had chosen her sorority over the X-Men, she would have missed even _him_, too.

She sat there for some moments until he returned, reeking of cigar smoke. He picked up that ugly Stetson hat. She stood up with her book in tow and made her way to the entrance of the rec room. "Well, I'm exhausted. I'm going to bed. Good night, Logan. Don't let the bedbugs bite."

He smiled at her as he sat down with another bottle of beer and turned on the TV. "Good night, Isabel." And he watched her until she quietly padded her way to the staircase and went upstairs.

Yes, she thought as she climbed into bed. She would have missed him. She would have missed how he bade her good night the most.

She was glad she didn't relinquish the sweetness of that tiny moment.


End file.
